An exploration of the social brain hypothesis in insects.
Open accessAbstract
The "social brain hypothesis" posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question. Here we examine the evolutionary relationships between sociality, cognition, and brain size in insects, a taxonomic group characterized by an extreme sophistication of social behaviors and relatively simple nervous systems. We discuss the application of the social brain hypothesis in this group, based on comparative studies of brain volumes across species exhibiting various levels of social complexity. We illustrate how some of the major behavioral innovations of social insects may in fact require little information-processing and minor adjustments of neural circuitry, thus potentially selecting for more specialized rather than bigger brains. We argue that future work aiming to understand how animal behavior, cognition, and brains are shaped by the environment (including social interactions) should focus on brain functions and identify neural circuitry correlates of social tasks, not only brain sizes.
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Insect colony organization may involve selection for either smaller, neurally differentiated worker brains or larger brains able to metabolically offset increased production and operation costs.
“insect colony organization may involve selection for either smaller, neurally differentiated worker brains (Lihoreau et al., 2012;Riveros et al., 2012;O'Donnell et al., 2015;Feinerman and Traniello, 2016) or larger brains (Wehner et al., 2007) able to metabolically offset increased production and operation costs (Kamhi et al., 2016).”
From When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants (2021) · cites this paper as Lihoreau et al., 2012
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“Social organization in ants may “require relatively simple and computationally inexpensive forms of cognition” (Lihoreau et al., 2012), some extrinsic to brain operations, that could mitigate the need for advanced processing capability.”
BackgroundSocial complexity influences brain investment and neural operation costs in ants
Kamhi, J. F., Gronenberg, W., Robson, S. K. A., & Traniello, J. F. A. (2016) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.1949 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lihoreau, M., Latty, T., & Chittka, L.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Lihoreau, Mathieu
- Venue
- Frontiers in Physiology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2012
- Volume
- 3
- Pages
- 442-442
- ISSN
- 1664-042X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3506958
- OpenAlex
- W2169198389
- Cited by
- 118
- References
- 75
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 3.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Physiology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Queen Mary Research Online (Queen Mary University of London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Australian Research Council
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- social brain hypothesis, insect sociality, brain size, social complexity, insect cognition, neural circuits, evolution of social behavior, comparative neuroanatomy, brain function
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